Archive

Of all my investment, I’d call my books as the best. I ensure a new addition to my book shelf every other month. Finding a reading time between a heavy schedule of work and family is tough, but it is just wonderful to turn off the annoying cell phone, shut the attention-seeking laptop down and get back to the wonders of the written word.

Literary prize winning books are never fun and it’s the general truth. The pleasure a Brown or a Sheldon gives is in no way comparable to such a prize winning book. But on the contrary I say you can appreciate a prize winning book only if you possess the eye for that. Two of the Man Booker Prize winners adorn my bookshelf – one from Ms. Desai “Inheritance of loss” and the other Mr. Adiga’s “The White Tiger”. And this particular post is about the latter. I know it’s a bit late, not just a bit – a good 4 year delay. But I blame myself for being on and off about my reading habits. If you haven’t read this one, go ahead and knock yourself out. If you have, then choice is yours to continue reading the post or just quit.

You’re an ardent reader or someone who’s just getting into this hobby? I’d gladly suggest Adiga. For one, his is the standard simpleton Indian English anyone could appreciate. None of those fancy buzzwords or words with more than 10 syllables. Two, and almost “The” best reason – you’d for once be supporting an Indian Litterateur.

Coming back to “The White Tiger”, here’s what I’d like to say about it (probable spoiler alert):

The plot – To give a very high-level overview of the story, it’s about how Balram Halwai from The Dark turns into Mr. Ashok Sharma of the White Tiger. The back cover describes Balram as The White Tiger, Servant, Philosopher, Entrepreneur, and also as a Murderer. The story runs from describing about a boy named Balram from Gaya who takes up the job of driver at Delhi and finally evolves into an entrepreneur Mr.Ashok at Bangalore. The story revolves around Balram’s philosophical musings and his experiences with the Indian society at large.

Storyflow – The story unassumingly begins as a one-sided rant (letter) from the author on the eve of Chinese premiere’s visit to India. Dark humour ensues with how the Premier would be treated in India giving him a Green Grass Image of India – when the ground realities are much worse. The story continues over a week, mostly through the nights with the author reminiscing his entire life under an eerie chandelier. In some way, tying the narration to a current event kept my pulse beating on the story and I could never skip a page.

Life is so full of mistakes. You see your friends making irrecoverable mistakes, but you can still offer them a shoulder and console them. You always can afford to say it’s not a big deal – there are far worse problems.

But when the same happens to you, you’re stumped! You feel it’s the end of the world, your days feel gloomy and dull. All that you can think of is that mistake you did. You replay those moments over and over on your head – fantasizing if things didn’t go the way it did. You painfully anticipate the harvest of your mistake. Every moment, every happening around you seem to be an excruciating reminder to that mistake.

Here are some things you can try doing:

Confess – Not to a confidante, not to a friend, but directly to the person whom your mistake impacts. It gets a huge load off your chest, and who knows you might have corrected your mistake by just this act!

Be proactive – Never wait for something, time will increase the impact of the mistake. Act swiftly.

Introspect – Would you remember this problem 5 days from now? 5 months now? 5 years from now? If no, then stop worrying. It wouldn’t even matter in the long run.

Learn – To err is human. But to learn is humane. Forget the specifics of the mistake, but understand the dynamics of your mind which put you there in the first place.

Having listed down, sometimes these might not suit everywhere. There are places you need to be cunning. Times when you need to wait out. After all, you were destined to make that single mistake and worry for a week.

Is your online e-mail account secure, with a 25 character alpha-numeric complex password? If you say yes, then you might need to read through the rest of the article.

Sadly the answer is a no, not necessarily.

A person who gets access to your personal online accounts with a malicious intent without your knowledge is called a hacker. But the term is normally associated with a person far off somewhere who’s using complex tools and techniques with immense knowledge of computer science. No, he needn’t be all that. He could just as well be a disgruntled colleague or an estranged lover or a total stranger who you tagged as a friend on Facebook, who is looking to gain access to your online account with a malicious intent. And this malicious intent can be from having a peek into your personal emails or spamming your account to vent off their ire or deface your public content or even look at siphon off some money from your bank accounts.

And do you need complex tools and techniques to get illegal access to your account? No, it can be done without them, if you’re providing the access yourself. Welcome to the term, Social Engineering.

Social engineering was once a social science term according to Wikipedia, but more associated with computers and security in recent days. It is a defined as an act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. But this day and age, there is no need to manipulate a person to get personal information, because all your actions are online in the social media.

Vulnerabilities: Let’s see a small illustration. Every email account has a “Forgot your password?” facility, which is designed for the rightful owners in case they had forgotten their password. Most of them identify you by a security question. This is something not everyone pays attention to, and mistakenly keeps a very simple one. Say like, “What’s my dog’s name?” And if your Facebook or Twitter update yesterday said, “Fun time with my fluffy” along with a picture of you and your pet dog, then you just gave someone an easy ticket to your personal emails.

An access to your emails means a little more than just a chance to read your personal emails. Most email or even your Facebook account have a chat feature and retain your chat transcripts. Your online bank account details/passwords are all at stake if you had openly chatted about it with someone very close or even your family member. All the hacker needs to do is sift through your chat history and dig gold out of it, quite literally.

Preventive measures to safeguard: It is very easy to share information online, Facebook, Twitter or a million other sites which make it easy to do so. But take a judgement call on what’s worth sharing and what’s not. It is not advisable to share what they call PII or Personally Identifiable Information. Likewise, it is not advisable to place very easily accessible information like your pet names as Security questions. Most online accounts provide facility to track usage through mobile phones, record new activity, log usage from new machines, etc… Make the best use of them.

Be proactive while adding friends on Social networking sites; Classify between friends and total strangers. When you’re sharing information on social media, be sure to choose your target audience and share it only with who needs know. If you’re a very active user of such social media, then spend some time to read about the safety and security features of the website. And in any case of suspicious activity on your account, proactively report it to the website administrators.

When technology leaps two steps to help humanity, it also enables certain elements leap four steps to harm us. Ignorance is never bliss; it does more harm than imagined.

Read somewhere, a bath and a haircut would give a new outlook on life. Yes, it did. Sometimes, your mind feels cluttered, just because your living space is cluttered. Driven by urgent needs, the cleanliness drive for the cramped two hours left my living space uncluttered. It’s always welcome into a clean home right?

Buzz of the week, the TRAI ban on SMS upper limit. Simple analogy, doesn’t it sound like saying, only a maximum of 100 calls allowed? Or a maximum of 100 minutes travel allowed per day? Or consumption of a maximum of 100 calories of food per day? Or a maximum of 2 movies per week? Well, the ban on SMS seems a little outrageous. For starters, let’s take the fact that SMS is one of the easiest and very popular modes of communication of today. As for me, I use it to tell about my whereabouts to my friends and family. When I’m in a meeting, and I’m constrained not to attend a call, I go for the SMS which I can do sneakily. When I’m having my dinner and I just need some time off to relish a meal, I just SMS, call me later. Sometimes SMS reduces the need for a lengthy call. Sometimes SMS reduces the awkward pauses in a conversation. SMS can be a concise way for communicating. For me, it never crosses beyond 20 per day. That’s me now. Take me few years back, and my count ran well beyond 200 per day. Even though I’m less worried about the ban now, I’m still sceptical about the day when my count will run off beyond 100. Even to communicate a new number to my old contacts who are in 100s, I prefer SMS. Which means, I should be updating them with my new number on 75 per day basis (keeping 25 as a safe keep)

I’d still miss the glorious days of yesterday, when people spammed each other with funny, sentimental, romantic, informative forwarded SMS.

Like this:

News of the week is that all of the people we know go to the West or get promoted or getting paid high bucks, is quite happy news but it sure does spoils the week for you. It’s quite like riding on the highway. You’re travelling at 90kmph, at highway standards you’re well beyond the speed limit. But relatively a person overtaking with just a 95kmph seems he’s leaving you behind. Not that I’m advocating speed, just an analogy.

Life’s experience is actually meaningless when you’re actually experiencing it; and when it’s in the past, it seems all so wonderful. Watching the world renowned FRIENDS series just brings back the moments I’ve spent with my friends. Moments this now can be only reminisced. Batches and batches of friends, loads and loads of acquaintances, Life is just full of people and experiences, isn’t it?

Speaking of people, the week made me realize how a simple act from someone can make or mar your day! For instance, a hi ruined my day and a simple compliment mail made the next.

Like this:

Well, there’s last week laundry to be done. My lunch and breakfast today has been Um.. not much. So with all this, it’s already 4 in the evening. All my work for the last two days has been operated out of my comfy cosy bed.

Let’s look at how the week went by.

Anna goes without Anna: My stomach keeps grumbling if I leave it to rest for at least 10 minutes. And Anna has been on and on with his fast for 11 days. At least the Parliament and the decision makers had the mercy to do something at this point. I’d really like to give credit to Anna. Not any one shouting against corruption can bring about such a nationwide movement.

My guess, Indians are really comfortable with Anna’s credibility and his ability to lead the nation against corruption.

At this point, Anna terms the progress as only half success. I pray

the neta’s spirit continues and fulfils the entire agenda. For the last 11 days, all the channels covered, nothing but, Anna’s fast. Would really hate to see a third episode of this kind. And did I mention, for some days on my drive and back from office, could spot lots of attention grabbing banners along the NH7 highway (Look for the one on the top of the building)

Sushma goes Swish,Swoosh against MMS:For the entire time, I was half expecting someone from the other side jump and grab her throat. For one, the points raised her were entirely valid. Liked the one were she exclaimed, “”The honourable PM speaks less, and even when he does, even his party members don’t listen!” Did I just notice a smile leaking at the corner of MMS’ lips?

Parking lot issues start again at office: Jumping from national issues to mine. Just when I thought, I was free from all the parking issues; it hit me in my behind. God, I just can’t spend time just standing outside the parking lot waiting for some space to clear up. To think, out of the meagre time I spend at the office, at least half goes away waiting for the parking. (Notice the huge line of cars behind the one you visibly see)

Like this:

For the unaware, West Bengal has been renamed to Poschim Bongo. The name on first count seems weird at least for a person who’s not familiar with the language of the state. Secondly, how does the name of a state, in any possible way, aid to the development of the state?

Consider the downside of renaming a state. How many government records need to be renamed? How many other records, railways, transport and anything that remotely use the name need to be renamed? Hundreds of hoardings, banners, advertisements need to be updated. All of this headache to just keep up the spirit of the language in words?

Or maybe I’m just reluctant with a positive/welcome change?

Same goes with Bengaluru A.K.A Bangalore, Puducherry A.K.A Pondicherry and an even longer exhaustive list.